Delivery drones can learn to see and dodge obstacles in-flight

Drones have a habit of crashing. If they are ever to be relied on for delivering packages in complex environments like cities, they’re going to have to get smarter. A team of researchers from the University of Zurich and Intel has come up with a way for drones to do this – learn to dodge obstacles as they fly.

Elia Kaufmann and colleagues wanted to develop drones that could autonomously pilot themselves through hoops or gates used in drone racing. They prepared a track with such gates laid out …